This chapter covers the following topics:
Partner Funds Management enables partners to submit and check the status of fund requests and claims online. Partners can request funds for specific marketing activities that are intended to increase sales of the vendor's products.
When a partner submits a fund request, it gets routed to the appropriate approver(s). Approvers are notified of the request and they review, approve, decline, or return the request. The approver can return the request asking the partner to provide additional information. After the partner resubmits the request and the request is approved, it executes the marketing activity and, subsequently, submits a claim to redeem money from the vendor. When the partner submits a claim, it is routed to the claim approver who then validates the claim. When the claim gets approved, the vendor pays the amount.
Partner and vendor users receive notifications about the fund request activity and can navigate directly from the notification into the associated fund request. Notifications are configured by the vendor and sent when the status changes, for example, when one of the fund requests is approved.
Partners can access a summary list of all the fund requests that they have access to in the system. They can build personal views to quickly find the fund requests that they are most interested in.
Setting up partner funds involves creating budgets, budget categories, activities, and media in Oracle Trade Management. Additional Oracle Trade Management set ups include creating a custom claim and budget approval rules. Other partner fund set ups include creating fund approval rules, notifications, and geographic criteria.
Each budget has five kinds of budgeted amounts. They are Planned, Committed, Utilized, Earned and Paid. The planned amount increases when a request is made on that budget. When the budget request is approved, the committed amount increases. The utilized and earned amounts increase when the offer is approved. The paid amount increases after claims are closed. In this flow, liabilities are earnings that are tracked at the expense lines.
Partner funds are intended for marketing campaigns. The channel administrator must set up budgets and budget categories to fund marketing activities. Budgets and their related items are set up and managed in the Oracle Trade Management Application. When a budget is created for marketing purposes, activities and media items must be associated with the budget. An activity is a marketing activity, such as a mass mailing or an advertisement in a trade publication. A media item is a component of an activity; for example, a mass mailing activity might include media items such as postage, design, and printing.
Activities are associated with budget categories. When a partner funds budget is created, it is associated with a budget category, which automatically associates activities and their corresponding media items with the partner funds budget. Liability is then tracked at the media item level for the budget, and partners must report their expenses at the media item level when requesting compensation for marketing activities.
This section provides basic procedures for setting up media items, activities, budget categories, and budgets. For more information, refer to the Oracle Trade Management Implementation guide.
Use this procedure to create marketing media items.
Navigation
Log on to Oracle Trade Management with the Oracle Trade Management User responsibility, and then navigate to Administration > Trade Management > Marketing Medium > Create. The Marketing Medium page appears.
Prerequisites
None
Notes
Activity: Select an activity with which to associate the marketing medium. If a media item is associated with an activity, it is available for that activity only. Otherwise, a media item can be associated with any activity.
Preferred Vendor: Allows the vendor to identify an organization that it prefers to use to create a particular type of medium. Examples of preferred vendors include a preferred printer or a preferred design firm.
Use this procedure to create a marketing activity.
Navigation
Log on to Oracle Trade Management with the Oracle Trade Management User responsibility, and then navigate to Administration > Trade Management > Activity > Create and then click Create. The Create Activity page appears.
Prerequisites
None
Notes
Active: Select to enable the activity for use with a budget category.
Marketing Media: Select the marketing media to be associated with the activity.
Use this procedure to create a budget category.
Navigation
Log on to Oracle Trade Management with the Oracle Trade Management User responsibility, and then navigate to Administration > Trade Management > Category > Create and then click Create. The Create Category page appears.
Prerequisites
None.
Notes:
Created for: Select Budget. The Activity list appears.
Enabled: Select to make the budget category active.
Sales/Expense/Charge Account: Use the lookup to select an Oracle General Ledger account for tracking purposes.
Accrual Liability Account: Use the lookup to select Oracle General Ledger account for liability tracking.
Activity: Use the search to add an activity to the budget category.
Budgets for partner funds can be either fixed or accrual budgets:
Fixed Budget: A fixed budget contains a specific amount of funds. A fixed budget allows the vendor to track the amount of funds that have been committed, used, earned, and paid for the budget. Companies generally use fixed budgets for Marketing Development Funds (MDF) budgets. Companies generally create MDF budgets in which they plan to spend a certain amount of channel marketing dollars in a particular time frame (for example, a quarter or a year).
Accrual Budget: An accrual budget starts with zero funds. The budget is then built up based on actual partner sales. For example, $100 is added to the budget each time a partner sells 10 units of a specified product. Companies generally use accrual budgets for co-op budgets, which offer partners a percentage of their sales revenue via channel marketing funds.
There are two types of accrued budgets:
Accrue funds for customers: Money is accrued by a partner over a period of time. The partner can later request some or all of the funds by submitting a claim or short paying an invoice.
Accrue funds for sales: Money is accrued by partner over time. A sales representative can request some or all of the funds to support marketing activities or to reward a partner.
Use this procedure to set up a fixed budget for partner funds.
Navigation
Log on to the Trade Management application with the Oracle Trade Management User responsibility, and navigate to Budget > Create, and then click Create to display the Create Budget page.
Prerequisites
A budget category for partner or marketing funds should be available. Activities and marketing media should be associated with the category.
Notes
Setup Type: Select Fixed Budget.
Category: Select the appropriate category for the partner funds budget.
Owner: By default, the owner is the user creating the budget. A different owner can be specified.
Refer to the Oracle Trade Management Implementation guide for information on other fields, if necessary.
Use this procedure to set up an accrual budget for partner funds.
Navigation
Log on to the Trade Management application with the Oracle Trade Management User responsibility, and navigate to Budget > Create, and then click Create to display the Create Budget page.
Prerequisites
A budget category for partner or marketing funds should be available. Activities and marketing media should be associated with the category.
Notes
Setup Type: Accrual Budget.
Category: Select the appropriate category for the partner funds budget.
Budget Amount: For an accrual budget, the amount should be zero.
Holdback Amount: For an accrual budget, the amount should be zero.
Owner: By default, the owner is the person creating the budget. Use the search to specify a different owner.
Accrue To: Select Customer or Sales
Accrual Basis: Select Accrual Per Order or Cumulative Order Volume.
Discount Level: Select Line
Liability Flag: Deselect if the budget is an Accrue to Customer.
When you click Create, the Budget Detail page appears. From this page, you can specify accounting information (from the General Ledger application), including an accrual liability account and a sales/expense/charge account.
Click Request Approval to begin the budget approval process.
When a partner fund request is approved, an offer is created in Oracle Trade Management. Partner funds uses the seeded custom setup Soft Fund - Lumpsum offer for partner funds. When a partner's fund request is approved, a lump sum offer based on this custom setup is created automatically. The offer is used to track funds committed for the fund request.
By default, the Budget Approval process has been disabled for the Soft Fund - Lumpsum offer. Depending on business requirements, budget approval can be enabled for the offer, and then the vendor can set up an approval process for soft fund budgets.
It is not recommended that you create additional offers for partner funds.
A default claim (which is called Claims) is available in Trade Management as a custom setup. This default claim is used for all flows that require a party (for example, a partner) submit a claim to be reimbursed for an marketing activity or other situation.
When a partner fund request is approved, a Soft Fund - Lumpsum offer is created. The offer creates an authorization code. When a partner user submits a claim for reimbursement for marketing activities, she must include the authorization code on the claim to link the claim with the offer and the approved funding request.
The default claim specifies that a number of items will be included in the claim form, including team information, notes, and request history. An organization can also create customized claim, if required. Creating a custom claim provides the following benefits:
Since all claims that use the default custom setup have the same prefix, identifying the type of partner request a claim is associated with could become difficult. Creating a customer claim allows you to set up a new prefix that can be used to easily identify partner fund claims.
Allows you to set up a different approval routing process for different types of claims. The default claim does not implement a claims approval process.
Set up a different claim validation process.
Refer to the Oracle Trade Management Implementation Guide for additional information on creating custom claims.
Trade Profiles allow defaulting of payment methods, vendor and vendor site mapping for a partner. Trade profiles are set up from Oracle Trade Management User > Administration > Trade Management > Customer > Trade Profile.
For more information, see the Oracle Trade Management Implementation Guide.
Depending on an organization's business requirements, a separate approval process can be created for the allocation of budget funds associated with a partner fund request. The budget approval process is set up in Oracle Trade Management, and is initiated when a Soft Fund - Lumpsum offer is created upon the approval of a partner fund request. Note that the budget approval process is a separate process from the partner fund request approval process, which is set up and administrated from the Oracle Approvals Manager application.
In the background, the concurrent program AMS Marketing Generic Approval runs to manage the approval workflow set up in this procedure.
Navigation
Log in to Oracle Trade Management with the Oracle Trade Management User responsibility, and navigate to Administration > Trade Management > Approval Rule, and then click Create to display the Approval Rule Details page.
Prerequisites
Before creating a budget approval process, make sure that:
Budget Approval is enabled for the Soft Fund - Lumpsum custom setup.
The appropriate budget approver Role Types and Roles have been created as part of the Oracle Trade Management implementation process.
Notes
Approval Rule For: Select Budget Request.
Budget Category: Optionally, a budget approval process can be associated with a budget category.
Minimum Amount: Depending on business requirements, budget approval might be required for requests that are over a certain amount. Either enter a minimum amount here, or enter zero if all budget requests must be approved.
Approvers: The approvers list appears after the Create button is clicked. Add one or more approvers to the list. We recommend that you select approvers of type User.
A performance objective is the expected outcome for a marketing activity. Performance objectives appear on a fund request and its related claim(s). When a partner user submits a fund request, he is required to indicate the performance that is expected as a result of the marketing activities for which he is requesting funding. Then, when the user submits a claim for the funding, he must indicate the actual performance for the marketing activity.
Performance objectives appear in a drop-down list, which is populated from a Lookup. The performance objectives Leads and Revenues are seeded; the channel administrator can add additional objectives as well.
Performance objectives are set up from the Oracle Trade Management Administration application. The lookup that is used for performance objectives is OZF_PARTNER_PERFORMANCE.
When a fund request approver either returns a request to a partner or declines a request outright, he must provide a reason. Return and decline reasons appear in drop-down lists that are populated by Lookups. Return and decline reasons are set up from the Oracle Trade Management Administration application.
The Lookup OZF_SF_DECLINE_CODE provides decline reasons. The following values are seeded for the Lookup:
COLLATERAL: The collateral submitted with the request did not meet the vendor's criteria.
DUPLICATE: The request is a duplicate.
INVALID: The request is invalid.
The Lookup OZF_SF_RETURN_CODE provides return reasons. The following values are seeded for the Lookup:
COLLATERAL: The collateral submitted with the request did not meet the vendor's criteria.
OTHER: The request was returned for another reason.
MISS_INFO: The request is missing information.
For partner funds, geography provides informational data. Geography is set up in Oracle Marketing by an user with the administrator responsibility. Up to eight geographic levels can be specified.
Geography may already be set up for your implementation, because geography is used in Partner Programs as well as in Oracle Marketing. However, if you need to set up geographic information, refer to the Oracle Marketing Implementation and Administration Guide for further details.
The ability to request funding for marketing activities is made available to partners as a benefit of partner program membership. A partner funds benefit is created by the channel administrator as a benefit of the type Soft Funds.
A channel manager can assign the partner funds benefit to a partner program. Subsequently, the channel administrator maps the program with a partner responsibility, which provides the partner users access to fund request and management pages.
Use this procedure to set up a partner fund benefit.
Navigation
Log in as the channel administrator and navigate to Programs > Benefits.
Prerequisites
A budget must be set up for partner funds.
Steps:
Select Soft Fund from the Create Benefits drop-down list and click Go.
The Create Benefit: Soft Fund page appears.
In the Budget region, select the budget that will be used to fund partner requests. More than one budget can be used to fund the benefit.
In the Notifications region, select the notification messages to be used for this benefit.
Partner fund requests are subject to an approvals process. When a partner user submits a funding request, it is routed to an approver, who is a vendor user. The approver can approve or reject the request. The partner fund approvals process is set up and managed through the Oracle Approvals Management application.
The seeded transaction for partner fund approvals is OZF Soft Fund Request. Numerous attributes have been defined for the transaction. A default fund request approver can be identified using the OZF: Default Soft Fund Request Approver profile option. For more information on setting up approvals for partner funds, refer to Creating Approval Rules in Oracle Approvals Manager.
Notification messages are sent to vendor and partner users in response to a number of partner fund request status changes. Notification messages for partner fund request are created using the Oracle Workflow Builder application. An organization might be able to implement the notifications that have been seeded for partner funds without modification. However, if you need to make changes to the seeded notifications, such as changing the message text, adding URLs to messages, or even creating additional notifications, you will need access to Oracle Workflow Builder and the Oracle database.
In Oracle Workflow Builder, the item type for partner fund notifications is OZFSFBEN. The following table lists the notifications seeded for partner funds and lists the types of users that are eligible for each notification and the partner fund request status that is applicable for the notification.
| Notification Name | User | Partner Fund Request Status |
|---|---|---|
| Request Created – Channel Manager Notification | Channel Manager | Draft |
| Request Submitted – Partner Notification | Partner Contact, Soft Fund Super User | Pending Approval |
| Request Submitted – Vendor Notification | Vendor Channel Manager, Vendor Approvers, Soft Fund Super User | Pending Approval |
| Request Approved – Partner Notification | Partner Contact, Soft Fund Super User | Approved |
| Request Returned – Partner Notification | Partner Contact, Soft Fund Super User | Returned |
| Request Cancelled – Partner Notification | Partner Contact, Soft Fund Super User | Void |
| Request Declined – Partner Notification | Partner Contact, Soft Fund Super User | Declined |
The following table lists fund request statuses and the corresponding fund request code.
| Status | Code |
|---|---|
| Draft | DRAFT |
| Pending Approval | SUBMITTED_FOR_APPROVAL |
| Returned | RETURNED |
| Approved | APPROVED |
| Declined | DECLINED |
| Closed | CLOSED |
| Void | VOID |
Notes can be created for a partner fund request. By default, all note types that are not specifically associated with another business object are available for partner fund notes. A vendor can create a note type for partner fund requests to limit the note types choices that are available for a request.
For more information about setting up notes and note types, refer to Setting up Notes.
The OZF_SOFT_FUND_SUPERUSER permission provides vendor and partner users with super user privileges for partner fund requests. Vendor users with this permission can view, update and approve all requests. Partner users with this permission can view and update all requests made by their organization.
The transaction type for fund requests is seeded and the value is OZF: Soft Fund Request.
The following mandatory attributes are seeded.
ALLOW_DELETING_RULE_GENERATED_APPROVERS
ALLOW_REQUESTOR_APPROVAL
AT_LEAST_ONE_RULE_MUST_APPLY
EVALUATE_PRIORITIES_PER_LINE_ITEM
USE_RESTRICTIVE_LINE_ITEM_EVALUATION
Partner Funds Management has header and line level attributes.
The following table describes the header attributes.
| Attribute | Description | Requiring Approval Types |
|---|---|---|
| ALLOW_EMPTY_APPROVAL_GROUPS | Whether to allow approval groups not to have members. | approval-group chain of authority, post-chain-of-authority approvals, pre-chain-of-authority approvals |
| CURRENCY_CODE | Currency Code | None |
| IS_VAD | To find whether the partner is a distributor | None |
| MEMBERSHIP_TYPE | Partner Membership Type | None |
| PARTNER_AMOUNT | Partner Amount | None |
| PARTNER_COUNTRY | Partner Country | None |
| PARTNER_INDUSTRY | Partner Industry | None |
| PARTNER_LEVEL | Partner Level | None |
| PARTNER_NAME | Partner Name | None |
| PARTNER_TYPE | Partner Type | None |
| REQUESTED_AMOUNT | Requested Amount | None |
| SOFT_FUND_BENEFIT | Soft Fund Benefit | None |
| TOTAL_AMOUNT | Total Amount | None |
| ACTIVITY | Activity | None |
The following table describes the line level attributes.
| Attribute | Description | Requiring Approval Types |
|---|---|---|
| PRODUCT | Product | None |
| GEOGRAPHY | Geography | None |
| PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES | Performance Objectives | None |
Interactions are logged whenever status changes for a fund request.
The following table provides information on seeded interaction messages that would be logged on the corresponding status changes.
| Message Name | Status Logged |
|---|---|
| OZF_SF_PENDING_LOG | Pending Approval |
| OZF_SF_REJECTED_LOG | Declined |
| OZF_SF_APPROVED_LOG | Approved |
| OZF_SF_RETURNED_LOG | Returned |
| OZF_SF_CLOSED_LOG | Closed |
| OZF_SF_DRAFT_LOG | Draft |
There are certain system profile options that must be set for partner fund requests to function properly. In addition to the profile options mentioned in this chapter, there are additional profile options that may need to be set. Refer to Appendix A, System Profile Options, for a complete list of profile options for partner funds.
There are some Lookups that can be modified for partner funds. Refer to Appendix B, Lookups, for more information.
There are several concurrent programs that need to be run periodically for partner funds. Refer to Appendix C, Concurrent Programs, for information about setting up and running the programs.